


Thrift

by orange_crushed



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Marauders' Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-16
Updated: 2011-04-16
Packaged: 2017-10-18 03:30:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/184512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_crushed/pseuds/orange_crushed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's only an umbrella," says Sirius.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thrift

They are arguing about money again, in a roundabout way. When they argue about money it is not usually money, it's groceries or new gloves or him begging Remus to move into the flat. It's all money, in the end.

"It's only an umbrella," says Sirius.

Remus bends over anyway, as if it were a wounded dove. He stops to run his long-fingered hands along the exposed strips of metal and the banged-up wooden handle and the bright silky-red skin of the cloth. He clucks his tongue at the waste of it.

"This is nicer than mine," he says finally. His careful fingernails scrape off a little grime. "Look at this, it's a Brigg."

"Let it go," Sirius says, and frowns at the depths of Remus's frugality. It rubs him the wrong way sometimes, makes him itchy and selfish and spoiled when he ought to be smiling down at Remus, encouraging his kind habits, his sensible thrift. Instead it makes Sirius want to buy velvet capes and throw money out of windows and he hates this nasty streak, this inherited lack of feeling. An emotional allergic reaction. He wonders if Remus knows, if Remus hates this about him. If he resents it, Sirius's bitter and continuing love affair with coin. "It's just a ratty old thing."

"There's life in it yet," says Remus, mildly, his answer to everything. The patched elbows and the jumpers from Second Time Around and the scorched pan for the eggs that was already scorched when his mother donated it. Life, in all that rubbish. Sirius mumbles something to this effect, rattling off the thing about the egg pan and the jumpers, and does not realize until a second later, when Remus is standing up with the umbrella bunched stiffly in his hands, that he has said a very Wrong Thing.

For a moment genuine hurt flashes across Remus's features, and then there is nothing at all- just schooled politeness, the enforced blank slate. It is a face he has perfected in long lines at the Ministry, and Sirius realizes sickly that he has just found it and dug it up and splashed it on him like cold water.

"Remus-"

"Picking up trash," Remus says, coldly. "I didn't think. You must be so embarassed."

"That's not what I said!" Sirius can feel his face coloring. "I'm not embarassed. If you need- it's just that if you need a new umbrella-"

"You'll buy one ?"

"Yes, of course!" he shouts. There are people watching from the end of the street, hurrying past. "I'd love to. I'd be happy to," he yells, furious and now embarassed at the idiocy of having to explain this. He would buy a dozen umbrellas, a mountain of them. He'd fill the Thames with umbrellas if Remus wanted it, shouldn't that be obvious by now ? But instead of looking pleased, Remus is just scowling at him. "What the hell is with you ?" Sirius yells, again uncomfortably conscious that this is the wrong thing to be asking.

"I'm not doing this here," says Remus, and walks away. Sirius doesn't ask _what is this_ because he doesn't want to know. He doesn't say anything at all. Remus's shoes are worn and quiet on the pavement, apologetic and out of place against the firm set of his shoulders. Sirius stares after him like a tourist, hopelessly lost, folding some internal map in on itself with patient fear.

 

 

Sirius sits in the dark of his flat while the sun goes down.

Early rain has already erased the clouds, so it takes a long time for light to sink down to the horizon and bleed over the rooftops and square off patches of street and sidewalk in an enormous golden chess game. He leaves the windows open, listening to traffic. He thinks about cooking supper in his own dishes, brand-new out of the box from Pottidge's mail-order, and feels slightly queasy.

There are empty parcels scattered on the floor and piled at the other end of the sofa, the leftover wrappings from all the things he ordered last week to fill the new place. He is in a self-reflecting mood and so he admits, at last, his plan: to make this a worthy home, a welcoming one, to make it good enough to share. But it was a stupid idea. He can see that now. He was thinking with his money again, not really remembering that luxury and comfort aren't the same. He wonders if this is it. It must be. For all the bank vaults and charm in the world he is still a castoff, a spare, a rejection burnt out of a tapestry, and now he has ruined things with the one person who appreciates patched seams and mismatched pairs of things.

"Can't talk, burning the chops," says James, when Sirius calls, and then there is a dull silence and the sound of stomping feet. In the background, Lily's voice says something amused and then James is back on the other end of the line. "I thought I did hang it up," he says, to Lily, while Sirius listens. "Oh. You mean on the big plastic thing ?"

"Let her explain telephone to you later," Sirius practically shouts into the receiever. He is already an expert, thanks to Remus and Remus's endless patience with muggle devices. "This is important."

"Important ?"

"I ruined everything," says Sirius, in a rush. "I think I did, with him, James, I don't know what to do."

"Calm down." He imagines James pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, the mannerism of focus. It's comforting. "What happened ? What did you say ? Something stupid, I imagine."

"Money stuff," Sirius admits. He can hear James's exasperated huff across the two-mile gap. "Yeah. It was bad."

"Fuck, you know that's his- it's like me teasing Lily about her hair. WHICH IS LOVELY BY THE WAY," he hollers back, away from the receiver. "That's like the worst possible thing you could ever bring up."

"I _know._ "

"Right, right. Have you tried owling him ? It's Moony, you have to communicate in full sentences. This isn't the first time you've-" James pauses. "Well, you know how to apologize is all I'm saying. And he forgives you almost everything. Poor old Moony, stuck with you, you wreck." There is the sound of a pan falling to the floor, and James sighs deeply. "Do you want to meet us at the Old Pony ? They have a good shepherd's pie. I think I'm about to be slapped, unless I can come up with decent dinner plans."

"Yeah, alright." He hangs up and ties his shoelaces and walks there, slowly, instead of flooing. He looks at the faces of the people passing closely, looking for Remus, for Remus's steady slow walk.

 

 

There is a truly improbable knock at the door, much later. So late that it is almost morning. Sirius is getting over a decent drunk and so he falls headfirst onto the coffee table and accordions himself into the hall, crashing against the left wall and then the right and wheezing as he does it.

"Hello," says Remus, when the door opens. "James said you were still alive when he dropped you off. I see he was half-right."

He is standing outside, patient and dry with that obscenely red umbrella unfurled like a banner over his scalp. His face is artificially pinked by the reflected color overhead. He's sewn the cloth back onto the spines and the umbrella seems brand-new. Everything about him looks warm. Sirius swallows a hiccup and a half-dozen things he thinks of saying, and settles for opening the door wider and letting him in. They stand crowded on the rug in his front hall because Remus's shoes are wet and because Sirius can't bear to stand anywhere else in the flat that's further away. "Well," says Remus, and Sirius puts a hand over his mouth.

"Please let me apologize," he says, like he practiced. His hand is still trembling over Remus's mouth. "I didn't mean to make you think-" he begins, and Remus leans forward just a fraction of an inch and presses a small, dry kiss to his fingers. The faint sound of water running off Remus's shoes is, in that moment, like the sound of a creek rushing over its banks. Sirius pulls his hand back and stares at it. "Why ?" he asks, helplessly. It's not possible to be given so much for so little. His understanding of worth and value is rapidly bottoming out. "How ?"

"Because I do," Remus says. "I just do." He's lost that terrible cold face and he looks like he always does. A little hopeful, a little shuttered. He is a closed book, maybe, but one whose lines Sirius has already memorized. "My mother always used that pan on the morning I left for Hogwarts," he says, suddenly, "and the jumpers remind me of my da. It's not that I don't appreciate the way you want to spend your money-"

"I know," Sirius says, miserably. He is truly an ogre. "I know and I'm sorry, I love that about you. I love all your stuff and I love the stories and breakfast is better in your pans than mine. Please, for Christ's sake, please take me back."

"Take you back ?" Remus looks surprised. "I don't think we- at least, I didn't," he says. "It was just a disagreement. I assume we'll have more," he adds, with a kind of wry twist at the corner of his mouth.

"Fine with me," says Sirius, and kisses the twist.


End file.
